Diello
Appearance Diello is a slight Forsaken of medium height, with smooth, powdery white skin kept in an advanced state of preservation through the technology of the Royal Apothecary Society. He emits a faint, dry odor of mummification, embalming chemicals, and antique bookpaper. While much of his body is in relatively pristine condition for a Forsaken, his face was almost unrecognizably mangled in a long-ago skirmish, leaving him missing his jaw. Diello sometimes overcomes this handicap by use of an experimental technique which allows him to telepathically transmit his words to an ooze which then expresses them by vibrating. However, owing to the delicacy of this method, Diello often prefers to rely on writing for communication. Views Philosophical Diello believes that most of the living have given up their free will. Forsaken, he contends, are reborn with no no allegiances, no monarch to usurp their autonomy, no religion to disturb their moral judgment, no family to burden them with its expectations, no physical dependency food or water which would force them into a life of servitude. A Forsaken comes into the world with both a clean personal slate and the independence of an adult, and is, therefore, free in a way the living very rarely are. Diello is essentially amoral; to him, the only unforgivable sin is to attempt to suppress free will. Political The only group to which Diello holds a strong allegiance is the Forsaken. His relationship with the sin'dorei is fairly congenial, and he believes their struggle to overcome magic addiction is a noble one. However, he holds a disdainful attitude toward the other Horde races, particularly the Orcs, whom he sees as elevating mindless obeisance to authority and the use of brute force to dominate others. It is Diello's conviction that all living races would benefit greatly from the gift of undeath, including the races of the Horde. Background Lordaeronian Farmhand Diello Van Korrigan was born on a dairy farm in the town of Andorhal, briefly before the outbreak of the First War. Reports of the orcish invasion were garbled and contradictory by the time they reached the Lordaeronian countryside, and the Van Korrigans dismissed them as fanciful at first. Following the destruction of the Kingdom of Azeroth, Lordaeron was flooded with refugees, and Andorhal expanded into a city. With increased demand for dairy goods, the farm experienced a new period of prosperity. Soon, however, the invading orcish army reached Lordaeron's shores, and a pall of fear and anxiety fell over Andorhal. As the orcs advanced, threatening to gut Lordaeron as they had Azeroth, the male youths of Andorhal were conscripted. Diello's older brother Mason was conscripted, but Diello, at 10, was not yet eligible. For months, Bazna Van Korrigan and his wife struggled to keep the farm running until, one night, an orcish raiding party swept through, slaughtering the cows and burning the stables to the ground. Diello and his family were left untouched in the farmhouse. The loss of the cows was a heavy blow, given the high cost of livestock in wartime. The Van Korrigans hurriedly sold the property and moved to a ramshackle farm in the country near Andorhal where they began to farm pumpkins and cotton. Mason, who had by then become a decorated soldier in the army of Lordaeron, supplemented their income with his commissions. On the day of Diello's thirteenth birthday, the Second War came to an end. The orcs were subdued and put into captivity, the Kingdom of Azeroth was reclaimed, and peace, so long distant, returned to Lordaeron. It was a pyrrhic victory, however, for the Van Korrigan family: Mason had become a casualty in the Assault on Blackrock Spire, the turning point of the war. Even with the assistance of a teenaged Diello, it was only possible to eke out a living on the farm. Time passed uneventfully, with each day consumed in the effort to run the farm productively enough to provide money for food, clothing, and equipment. Two years after the war had concluded, Dalar Dawnweaver, a prominent mage of the Kirin Tor, visited the farmstead. He told Bazna that Mason had saved his life during the Siege of Dalaran, and presented the family with a handsome monument in which an image of Mason's face was displayed. After Dawnweaver departed, Bazna put the monument on display on the mantel of the farmhouse. In the weeks following, Diello developed a fascination with the magic-infused monument, and, eventually, Diello began spending most of his share of the farm's income on books describing the history of magic. It was in this period that Diello decided that he would not grow up to be a farmer-- that, instead, he would travel to Dalaran and become a mage of the Kirin Tor himself. He struck up a correspondence with Dawnweaver who, remembering him as the brother of his savior, spoke favorably of getting Diello an apprenticeship to an established magister if he ever wanted it. Though he knew that it would be hard going on the farm without him around, Diello's desire to become a mage overrode even his concern for his family, and he announced his intention to leave for Dalaran on his 21st birthday. To Diello's surprise, his father acquiesced without argument. "If you can become a great mage," he said, "you will save us all." Scribe for the Kirin Tor Upon arriving in Dalaran, Diello contacted Dawnweaver, who introduced him to Antonidas, Grand Magus of the Kirin Tor, in glowing terms. Dawnweaver scheduled Diello for an assessment of his intrinsic magical proficiency the following day. Diello checked into an inn, his head swimming with visions of the way he'd live once he'd established himself as a mage. The next day, with Dawnweaver's encouragement, Diello underwent his assessment, in which he was asked to manipulate wands enchanted with different varieties of magical energy. The wands which responded most vigorously to the wielder's efforts, the Kirin Tor contended, indicated which schools of magic he would be most likely to succeed in. To Diello's shock,however, he was unable to get any of the wands to respond beyond the projection of a faint luminescence. Dawnweaver assured Diello that, despite this seemingly inauspicious result, he would be able to persuade the Kirin Tor to grant him an apprenticeship, adding that the wand test was based on some highly speculative theories. While Diello was waiting for the apprenticeship to arrive, his money was running out. With Dalar Dawnweaver as a reference, he secured a reasonably well-salaried position as a scribe, taking notes on the meetings of the Magus Senate. Diello was buoyed for a time, transcribing discussions on the mechanics of golem creation, the summoning of portals, and all different stripes of magic. Still, despite Dawnweaver's encouragement, Diello was never accepted for an apprenticeship, and he eventually dropped the matter. Despite the apparent frustration of his ambitions, Diello lived calmly, believing that, somehow, he would eventually be able to overcome the dramatically disappointing results of his assessment and take up a profession in some field of magic. In the meantime, he lived out a reasonably comfortable existence in the constant presence of Dalaran's magical innovation. Some time after the mentions of an apprenticeship had stopped, Bazna wrote Diello a letter asking him to return to the farm. Though he supplied no specifics, Diello suspected that his health was failing and, once he was no longer able to work, it would probably mean moving into the city to be supported by Minette working some a menial job in a shop or tavern. Diello knew, though, that he could never persuade himself to return to the rustic woods beyond Andorhal-- that he belonged here, in the wizarding city. While Diello scribed for the Kirin Tor, new rumors began to grow-- sketchy, inconsistent rumors that reminded Diello of the ones he'd heard traded in his very early childhood. There was word of a mysterious disease sweeping through northern Lordaeron. It killed with startling rapidity-- no cure was found-- there was talk in Capital City that the whole of the northlands might be quarantined-- and so on. Diello's vague unease at the rumors grew into claustrophobic anxiety as the letters from his father became filled with descriptions of a countryside blighted by a nightmarish, unstoppable sickness. The deer and squirrels were dead; the cows were dying. The paladins of the Silver Hand had been dispatched in force to the countryside, but all they could do was pray over the dying. From his father's letters, Diello heard something he'd not even heard repeated in the bars of Lordaeron: that the people who succumbed to the disease weren't staying dead, but were, instead, coming back to life, but not as themselves. Then the letters stopped. It was like the fog of tension and unanchored fear that had come with the Second War. And then the rumors grew into official reports: towns across all Lordaeron had been wiped out by the plague which, the Kirin Tor now openly theorized, was not a natural phenomenon but rather a deliberately-engineered magical weapon. Prince Arthas had defected to the creators of the plague and murdered the king; suddenly, Lordaeron itself was in shambles. In the weeks that followed, the reports resolved further: Arthas, now commanding a magically-risen army of the dead, had leveled Silvermoon in order to access the magical power of the Sunwell, and was on the move again. The implication was clear: if Arthas was attempting to harness magical energy, Dalaran would be next It was then that Dalar Dawnweaver called on Diello for the first time in many months. The Kirin Tor and its most trustworthy servants were to construct a layered aura of energy-- a literal shield of magic-- which would damage any undead who passed within it. If Arthas's army passed inside the city, Antonidas theorized, they would be destroyed by the aura's power before they could do any serious damage. As reports that Arthas's army was nearing Dalaran arrived again and again, Diello and the others helped the Kirin Tor lay out concealed magical conductors which would help extend the aura. The next day, Diello was awakened in his room by the bell of the Violet Citadel. Together with most of the inhabitants of Dalaran, Diello squeezed into the citadel, where Antonidas was maintaining the integrity of the innermost layer of the aura. Sounds of chaos and destruction grew nearer and nearer outside the walls of the building, even as Antonidas struggled to maintain the aura which was to repel Arthas's forces. Finally, the doors of the citadel burst inward, and the army of undead swarmed through the chamber, killing indiscriminately. Diello managed to escape through the Magus Senate's chambers but, in the streets outside the Violet Citadel, he was ambushed by a pack of ghouls and killed. Soldier of the Scourge Diello's rest was short-lived, however, as many of the former citizens of Dalaran were risen to join the Scourge. Diello was among them-- gradually putrefying, and with any spark of his former personality overriden by Arthas. Diello moved with the undead army, as obedient as a machine. Whether he spent the full of his time guarding the Scourge-occupied town of Brill or whether he roamed across the countryside, sacking cities and massacring their inhabitants, he would never know. Afterward, only the faintest traces of memory remained, as if, to the mind of a Scourge thrall, all experience was too indecipherable and flat to recall Forsaken warlock Diello was standing in the tavern of Brill with a sword in his hand when, for the first time in many months, he became aware of his own existence again. He tried to connect the visions of being closed in by a pack of ghouls with where he was now. Had he escaped? Had he died, and this was some bizarrely commonplace underworld? No. Diello hefted his sword. He wondered if the image of ghouls closing in around him, of the entire city of Dalaran being crushed, were all part of some hallucinatory nightmare. He remembered the farm, the small golden artifact with Mason's face on the mantel. That was real, wasn't it? Diello exited the tavern and spied a group of undead talking in the center of the town. Decayed corpses lay among strewn weapons in the street. Diello approached the undead as stealthy as he could and ran one of them through with his sword. "Scourge!" cried one of the undead. Diello snarled and brandished his sword, but his use of the weapon was clumsy. He missed, and the blade embedded itself in the dirt. One of the undead dealt him a crushing blow to the face. He fell onto his back, sure, again, that he was in the process of dying. "No," said the first undead. "He's no Scourge. Look at his eyes." The second undead laughed. "The poor bastard probably thinks he's still in Stratholme or something." When Diello awoke, he was back inside the tavern, stripped of his weapon and plate armor. The two surviving undead whom he'd attempted to ambush stood to either side of him, weapons drawn. Diello found that he could not speak; the entire lower half of his face had been ripped off by the undead's blow and yet he survived and, it seemed, failed even to bleed. With a practiced patience, the two undead explained to Diello his recent past-- killed, then resurrected to serve as the Lich King's tool, and now freed thanks to the efforts of Sylvanas Windrunner, an undead elf who had led an effort to return the wills of those under psychic domination of the Scourge. He was-- they all were, they told him-- now Forsaken. For many days, Diello wandered aimlessly through the land around Brill, silent to everyone. He was, his brain told him, required to be horrified and grief-stricken-- Lordaeron destroyed, Dalaran destroyed, his family probably killed, and he reduced to an unnatural monstrosity. He'd lost so much. Yet, somehow, he was not horrified or even distinctly upset. All the things which were gone from him seemed unreal, like an image in mist. Diello returned from the wilderness, gathered a few of the things he'd had on him when he returned to awareness, and traveled to Undercity. Once arrived, Diello made his way to the Magic Quarter and looked over its array of books on magic instruction and history. Immediately, Diello realized that he was looking at material related to a school of sorcery unpracticed even in Dalaran-- fel magic. Under the tutelage of Bethor Iceshard, a mage whom Diello remembered faintly from Dalaran, he quickly mastered the foundational techniques of fel evocation. More and more, Diello found himself looking back in horror, not just at his own, personal life, but at the life of Lordaeron society. Citizens paid fealty to a king they had never met and knew little about, marched off to war for reasons they didn't understand, and were expected to automatically acquiesce to the moral judgments of the church. As a Forsaken, he was bound only to his own judgment. He had been born an adult, alone, in a tavern. He was shackled to no family, no society. "I am released from the invisible prison that held me for 24 years," he would later write upon meeting Sylvanas in the flesh, "Now, for the first time, I know what it feels like to be free. My lady, even if I could speak, I would have no words for my gratitude to you." As his mastery of the demonic arts expanded and his ability to travel Azeroth independently grew, so did his appreciation for the phenomenon of the Forsaken. The other Horde races were, in his opinion, little better than the humans, eagerly turning over their ability to think, feel, and self-determine to the first authority figure who came their way. In Lordaeron, this figure held an illuminated staff; in Orgrimmar, a bloody mace and a banner. Diello developed a friendly relationship with Undercity's Royal Apothecary Society, as well as Forsaken Scientist Gerard Abernathy, who developed a technique by which Diello could telepathically command a small ooze to talk for him. Uncomfortable though he was with the idea of controlling another creature's actions, Diello allowed it, bringing out the ooze from time to time to allow for speedier and more intuitive communication. Diello maintains a room in the Legerdemain Lounge in Dalaran, and divides his time between harassing the Alliance independently, taking part in the operations of the Forsaken military, and enjoying life in the city. As a Forsaken in good standing with the reconstituted Kirin Tor, Diello has access to Dalaran's libraries, and spends much of his time researching the Third War and the mechanics of undeath, dreaming of a day when the gift of undeath could be spread fully across the world. Diello has also developed a fondness for Dalaranian wine that he did not display in life. Links Diello@Armory Category:Forsaken Category:Horde Category:Horde Warlock Category:Skinner Category:Engineer